Reptile corset – for sale SOLD!

Lizard underbust corset

I made this little corset a couple of weeks ago, but sadly it doesn’t fit me properly, so it’s in need of a new home.

Lizard underbust corset

The front and back have the same print – a chameleon on the left and what may or may not be an iguana on the right. The centre front measures 22cm from top to bottom, the centre back is 19cm, and the sides are 17cm. It’s boned with flat steel throughout, so it’ll take a couple of wearings for these to mould to the shape of your body.

Lizard underbust corset

The fabric is a cotton print, the lining’s plain black cotton, and the strength layer’s beige coutil. The binding is plain green cotton bias. The back lacing is also bias cut green cotton. There are nine silver eyelets on each side at the back. They’re one-part split eyelets, which can be a bit scratchy, so I’d recommend wearing this corset over other clothes rather than next to your skin.

Lizard underbust corset

And now for the all-important measurements… fully closed, this corset measures 25½” at the waist, 28″ around the top, and 36″ at the bottom. It’ll easily accommodate measurements up to 4″ larger. (29½”/32″/40″) This style will work best on someone with a well-defined waist-to-hip ratio – so you can be up to 4″ larger than the measurements, but you need to be roughly in proportion with them.

£45, including UK postage. Leave a comment if you’d like to take it off my hands, or if you have any questions!

 

(I don’t have enough fabric left to make another one, sorry! And I’m not doing custom corset commissions at the moment.)

Leaf rubbings on silk

Leaf rubbings on silk

This is another little experiment with natural materials and silk – this time some leaf rubbings. I did this activity with the children at work a couple of weeks ago, with crayons and sugar paper, when it occurred to me that it would probably work just as well with silk. A couple of leaves from the garden later, and what do you know? It does!

The rubbings are done with Derwent Inktense pencils, with varying degrees of water applied to the silk to see what would work best. I also used this little sample to practice my hand-rolled hemming. I think you can see that I started on the right and finished on the left! A finer needle and thread are called for, I think, to keep the stitching properly invisible. I also need to do a bit more practice to get the leaf rubbings just right, so I think I’ve just found a handy use for all the dye samples.

There’s a bigger piece of silk steeping in tea at the moment, waiting to be turned into a scarf. It’s two metres long and half a metre wide, so that’ll give me five metres of hem, and a nice big space to practice on.

Turmeric dyeing experiment

Turmeric dyeing

It seems as though I’ve been bitten by the dyeing bug rather badly. I can’t stop thinking about plants I could grow in my garden (coreopsis, safflower, weld, marigolds), or plants I could forage (walnuts, elderberries, sumac), or plants I could ask friends-and-relations to save for me (onion skins, rhubarb leaves).

I’m still working in the kitchen without mordants, so the next obvious step was turmeric. A quick trip to the corner shop procured a nice big bag of spice, and I found these instructions online. I used them as more of a guideline than a rule, as I don’t have a thermometer, and I don’t have any coffee filters to strain out the turmeric powder.

Turmeric dyeing

I cut slightly larger pieces of fabric this time, with a total dry weight of 30g. I used 25g of turmeric powder, and the water looked extremely yellow! As before, all the fabric’s been pre-treated by a quick trip through a hot wash, and it was all dampened under the hot tap before putting it in with the turmeric.

Turmeric dyeing
Left to right: silk paj, silk dupion, bamboo, cotton muslin

The fabrics started to take up the colour immediately, a beautiful rich yellow. Apparently you can modify this to red with the addition of baking soda, but I wanted to see what colour the pure turmeric would result in first.

As before, I simmered the turmeric for an hour, then added the fabric and simmered for another hour. Finally the heat was turned off and the water left to cool before rinsing the turmeric out of the fabric. I could probably have kept the dye and used it again to create a paler colour – or perhaps tried to modify it the second time around.

Turmeric dyeing

An awful lot of colour leached out of the fabrics as I was rinsing them, particularly the cotton and bamboo, but I was still left with nice bright colours.

Turmeric dyeing
Cotton muslin, silk paj, bamboo, silk dupion

I hung them out on the washing line to dry, loving the fantastically bright yellows, but bearing in mind the warning that turmeric isn’t terribly light fast as a dye. How bad could it be though, really?

Turmeric dyeing

An hour and a half later, I had my answer! You can see the colour change most clearly in the silk dupion (on the right), which has a stripe down it where it was covered by the bamboo as it dried. As a friend pointed out, when you want to shift a turmeric stain it seems to stay for ever, so perhaps the answer is to leave the stained garment out in the sun for a bit…

The colours are still lovely, if nowhere near as bright as they were to begin with. This photosensitivity does limit what I can do with the finished fabric though. I don’t want to go out  on a summer day wearing a bright yellow scarf, and come home wearing a white one!

Summer dress three…

Panelled dress - front

Inspired by the dress I made last week, Vogue 1301, I made another one today. I drafted the pattern myself, using the Cochenille Garment Designer software, and made alterations as I went along. I forgot to lessen the amount of ease included, so the armholes are still a bit big, but overall I’m really pleased with this one.

As you can see, the seams are overlocked on the outside, making it super quick and easy to put together. The pockets look a bit high on the mannequin, but my waist sits higher than hers, so they’re actually in the perfect place for my hands.

Panelled dress - back

The belt is my usual 2″ sash, nice and long to make a bigger bow. The neck and arms are bound with vintage cotton bias binding. The fabric’s a cotton lawn from Fabric Land, and I think I have enough left over to make another dress!

The first priority is to make some kind of petticoat to go underneath. I’ve just ordered a 1970s lingerie book, having seen the gorgeous pictures on Miss Peelpants’ blog. I can’t wait to make some pretty things when that arrives. In the meantime I can wear the purple petticoat that goes with my my Phase Eight dress, which should make this one safe to wear for work.

Phase Eight

Phase Eight

I wasn’t expecting to buy a new summer dress, especially not so hot on the heels of having made one! But we were walking through Debenhams and this one leapt out at me from the Phase Eight rail. It was my size, the last one left in the shop, and reduced from £85 to £19. Now that’s my kind of bargain!

It’s made from cotton lawn, and has a detachable slip/lining in the same fabric. (I don’t know why the website says viscose, it’s definitely cotton.) Raglan sleeves, slightly gathered, a bit of a ruffle, pintucks, an empire line belt, and the perfect colour. Technically I could make this dress myself, but in reality I never would. Mostly because of the pintucks. They’re so fiddly that I probably wouldn’t bother.

As I was sprinting gleefully towards the till, I discovered that one of the straps on the lining was broken. I politely mentioned this to the cashier and he gave me an extra 10% off, making it even more of a bargain! A couple of stitches later, and the dress is even better than new. I expect I’ll be wearing this one rather a lot.

Vogue 1301

Vogue 1301

This is Vogue 1301, a Koos van den Akker design. I’ve been stalking this pattern online for ages, so as soon as it appeared in the UK I snapped it up. The recommended fabrics are chiffon, georgette and gauze, all of which I hate sewing with a fiery passion, so I decided to go for a fine cotton voile instead. I also decided to go for plain black, figuring that would have an easier place in my wardrobe than the four contrasting prints pictured on the envelope! It also meant that I needed much less fabric – only three metres in total.

Despite being marked as “advanced”, the pattern came together really easily. All the seams are sewn on the outside, and then finished with the overlocker. The dress has a simple three-piece lining, so you don’t have to make the entire thing twice. I used cotton lawn for the lining, which was probably a mistake as the two layers tend to stick together. (And it shrank A LOT when I pre-washed it.) Next time I’ll use bamboo, which is much more slippery.

Vogue 1301

The finished dress is actually extremely full, although it doesn’t look it because the fabric’s so thin. It’s pretty shapeless, so I added a large belt. I think the only thing I’d change about this pattern is the shape of the armholes. They’re enormous! It does say “cut away” on the envelope, but they come down almost to my waist! So this dress can really only be worn with a vest or a t-shirt underneath, unless you don’t mind showing your bra to all and sundry.

The belt I made up as I was going along. The wide part is from Butterick 5371, and the ties are my usual 2″ fabric sash belt. The ties are offset (at the top on one side and the bottom on the other) so that they don’t get all tangled up as they cross over in the middle of the belt. They simply tie in a bow at the back. I lined the belt with velvet, the idea being to stop it from sliding around over the top of the dress.

I think I need a plainer belt for every day wear, but I’m really pleased with this dress. Although I made it for the summer, with a contrasting t-shirt and socks underneath, I think it’ll actually get a lot of wear all year round.

Tea dyeing experiment

Out of date decaf

I’ve been reading a lot of books and blogs about dyeing fabric with plants lately, and I wanted to do a little experiment. But chemical mordants seemed a bit complicated and scary, and I don’t yet have a dedicated saucepan just for dyeing, and I wanted to get started straight away. So, inspired by Tiina Teaspoon, I decided to start with tea!

Tiina recommends freezing your used teabags until you’ve got enough to dye with, which I’m going to start doing from now on, but tucked away in the back of the cupboard I knew I already had a box of decaffeinated tea bags that had gone out of date. I started with 16g of dry fabric (silk paj, cotton muslin, bamboo and silk dupion) and 17g of tea, or five tea bags.

Fabric swimming in the tea

I filled a saucepan with hot water, and simmered the tea bags for an hour. Our water here is very hard and full of lime, and there was a lot of scum on the top of the tea. I did wonder whether I should have used distilled water, but not having any to hand, tap it had to be. I took out the tea bags before adding the fabric. All of the fabrics had previously been through the washing machine to remove any starches or other treatments left over from the manufacturing process (including the silk), and I soaked them in warm water before putting them into the tea.

Taking up the colour

The resulting brew was very dark, and the fabric began to take up the colour immediately. If I just wanted to dull down a piece of cotton, or create an “antique” look, I wouldn’t have needed to do much more than just dip the fabrics into the tea.

Almost finished

In the end I let the pot simmer for another hour, by which time almost all of the water had evaporated. Possibly I should have left the lid on the pot, and turned the temperature down even lower. The water really only needs to be kept hot for this, not actually boiling. After the hour I turned off the heat and left the fabrics in the tea dye to cool down. I kept stirring the fabrics around throughout the entire process, maybe every fifteen to twenty minutes or so. (Every time I walked through the kitchen. I wasn’t very precise about it!)

Tea dyed fabrics
From left to right: bamboo, silk paj, cotton muslin, silk dupion

I rinsed the fabrics under the shower until the water ran clear, which was actually very quickly. I didn’t use any detergents, just warm water. I knew the cellulose fibres (bamboo & cotton) would take the colour differently from the protein (silk) ones, but I’m suprised at the depth of colour and the variations between them all. The fabrics are still a little bit damp in this photo, so the dupion has dried a little bit paler, but the two silks have kept their shine, and the colours are just lovely.

I’m now on the lookout for more plant dyes that can be used without any additional chemicals to fix the colour or release the dye. In the meantime I have plenty of tea in the house, so I can feel an experiment coming on!

Noro Kureyon Sock

Noro Kureyon

I’ve been knitting rather a lot of socks lately, mostly with Regia yarn, because that’s what’s easiest to get hold of at my local shops.

I’ve been resisting the lure of Noro Kureyon sock yarn for quite a while now, mainly because it’s usually out of my budget. But the colours are just lovely, so as soon as I spotted some in the John Lewis sale I couldn’t resist.

When I was winding the skein into a ball I thought I’d bought the impossible – a ball of Noro without a knot in it! Sadly with a mere five grams to go, the inevitable knot appeared. But at least there was only one, which is a massive improvement on any other ball of Noro I’ve ever bought. It’s still full of bits of twig though, which seems ridiculous. If I’ve spent all this money on a ball of  yarn, I don’t want to be picking bits of vegetation out of it as I knit!

It’s also really oddly spun. Very thick and very thin in places, which makes it impossible to achieve a nice smooth fabric. This is going to be one lumpy sock. So twisty, too. The yarn is full of energy, and absolutely desperate to ply itself as you knit. And then there’s the texture. So rough! Having just worked on one sock with some scrumptiously soft String Theory Colorworks yarn, this Noro feels like horrible scratchy rope.

Everyone who’s seen me knitting this sock has been absolutely entranced by the colours, but immediately disappointed as soon as they’ve touched it. I’m assured that the socks will soften once they’ve been through the wash, and I really hope that’s true! I was going to give them to a friend as a Christmas gift, but I don’t think “I thought you’d like a pair of scratchy, lumpy socks” is quite the message I want to convey!

So much for summer

Raindrops

Well, it’s the middle of July – the point of the year at which I’d usually be complaining about my Shed turning into a sauna, and my skin turning lobster-coloured.

Raindrops

Instead I’m sitting here in the dark, with the heater on, looking out at the rain.

So much for summer.

Maiden Erlegh Lake

We’re still trying to get outside as much as we can though, dashing out for short walks between the rain showers.

Just as we were heading home last night, we saw two foxes in the fields. My camera couldn’t manage to catch them in the twilight, but it was lovely to watch them for a while.

Summer Walk

Hydrangea

It finally felt a little bit like summer, for about an hour at lunchtime today. I’ve been ill for most of this week, and cooped up indoors, so I thought I’d brave a little walk.

Poppy

The hydrangea above, and these poppies, are in the garden of my local church. It’s a brand new building with a brand new garden, but a few small plants are finally starting to establish themselves.

Poppy heads

I do love my little camera. It’s a Pentax Optio A30, about five years old, and it took this picture all by itself, on the super macro setting. The only post-processing I did was to crop the image into a square.

Sadly it’s just about on its last legs (it’s terrible in low light, and barely speaking to the batteries), which means I’m going to have to replace it. I’m not looking forward to that, partly because I can’t afford a new camera, and partly because this one’s been so lovely that I’m completely spoiled by it.

Hogweed

This hogweed (I think!) grows at the side of the path down to the underpass.

Hogweed

It gives me ideas for silver clay jewellery, with this lovely sculptural shape pressed into a pendant. Or perhaps a lovely embroidery, with the buds made up of french knots.

White cornflower

These cornflowers have both appeared in my front garden. Who knew you could have white cornflowers? The only ones I’ve ever known have been blue. I sowed three mixed packets of wildflower seeds, and this is the only little patch that’s come up. A square foot of daisies and cornflowers amongst the thyme.

Cornflower

Hopefully they’ll seed themselves, so that next year we have a front garden full of these little gems.